Joe Neumaier

It's been a long, not always linear path to the opening of the new tower, planned for 2014. Yet, as one observer says here, the project has helped heal New York in a very New York way - acrimonious, messy and loud.

Barrymore is a delicious opportunity to watch the great Christopher Plummer perform the role that won him a second Tony Award. But it's also a lesson in the pitfalls of personality-based minimalism. While Plummer acts his heart out, the script becomes one punchline after another.

John Cleese, Michael Palin and Chapman himself (courtesy of interviews, skits and various recordings he made before his death from cancer in 1989) chime in. It's an odd little trip, but if it weren't, one would have to ask, "Well what's all this, then?"

This amazingly beautiful, and amazingly frightening, documentary captures the immediacy of what climate change is doing to the Arctic landscape.

The history lesson in Steven Spielberg's austere, engrossing Lincoln is less about the revered President himself but his method for justice.

Toscanini plays a role in the tale, as does Einstein and a young Zubin Mehta. If director Josh Aronson tries to follow a few too many strands of the story, it's only because there's so many tantalizing ones.

This beautifully photographed drama is well-played throughout with great conscience without becoming heavy-handed.

Writer-director Julia Loktev sustains the tension for long, Antonioni-esque passages that portend something momentous. The film delivers in unexpected ways, and then ponders what it means.

For all its strengths, the film is cursed by an ADD-style structure and a flashy but inevitably ineffective casting stunt.

Though a notch below "Royale," Skyfall follows that reboot's lead, making a now 50-year-old icon as cool as when he began.

Amiable but ambling.

A sweet testament to the power of intelligence to win over adversity - even in a Brooklyn middle school where the majority of students live below the poverty level.

It's a naive example of the transformative powers of a 23-year-old let loose amongst the dullards. Whoa.

It's strange to call a film with so much nudity and simulated sex "old-fashioned," but The Sessions nicely bridges that gulf.

PA 4's best idea, besides reintroducing the slow-walking, statuesque Katie, is a strange video trick involving lots of little lights filling a darkened room. It's tough to describe, but the cameras, of course, capture a figure the characters can't.

Winstead and director James Ponsoldt add something gripping and modern to the cinema of recovery, a well-mined genre that can still, it seems, yield thoughtful surprises.

Atrocious dreck that feels sitcomish, only without the polish or panache.

Argo is movie magic. Ben Affleck's third directorial outing, is an entertaining, real-life, race-the-clock thriller that nabs you at the start and never makes a wrong move.

All banality, though it delivers some goodwill even as it pulls a muscle trying to get its premise going.

Irritating and clichéd.

Like its subject, the movie is not as calculating as it seems.

This is an odd little directorial debut from Matthew Lillard - the onetime Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo," now a solid character actor thanks to "The Descendants" and "Trouble with the Curve" - but it has its rewards.

It is likely to become an unintended camp classic, something we haven't had since "Showgirls."

Taken 2 has a plot that could have been written by a GPS program, and contains all the technical charm that conjures up.

Though too much of this of-the-people, for-the-people chronicle is by necessity gummed up by clunky captions and explanations, it is an effective, and heartfelt, clarion call.

Janssen's affectionate, almost-1970s-style view of innocents-at-large may not be polished, but earns points for being from the heart.

As a vampire might say, "Be- vaaare , all who enter here above the age of 7! What lies on the screen ... is not for you !"

Gordon-Levitt is flinty, and Willis, on his A-game, is fiery. Together, they take us on a helluva trip.

A wild and unexpected film.

Ah, perfect: A banal story to go with intermittently banal porn.

Rarely has any film, fictional or documentary, captured the hypnotic effect of voices on the airwaves like this chronicle of Bob Fass.

The drug that Ma-Ma trafficks in, Slo-Mo, slows its user's brain to 1% of its normal speed. Dredd unfortunately makes you feel as if you, too, have partaken.

Trouble With the Curve is easily digestible in chunks – if it were a CBS show, it'd be called "Postseason With Morrie" - and it has an affectionate view of grubby motels, greasy diners and small-town scoreboards.

Thuddingly awful.

Liberal Arts is at its most nauseating when we hear Jesse and Zibby read their oh-so-self-aware love letters.

Though it teeters at times on the edge between potboiler and melodrama, Arbitrage benefits from a notable lack of sympathy for Gere's Gordon Gekko-like Miller. Rather than seeming pat, Jarecki's straightforward cynicism is pointed and purposeful.

This superb, cerebral film about unchecked belief is a fictionalized and cutting drama hinging on the origins of Scientology. Scratch around a bit, though, and its wider indictments become clear.

Writer Sarah Koskoff's nuanced script and director Todd Louiso's ("Love, Liza") delicate tone follow indie terrain, but go the right way.

Fred Schepisi's sly, stately comedy-drama that will please fans of BBC melodramas. But even on its own merits, its mild manner has sneaky stings.

In a film that deliberately recalls 1970's "Five Easy Pieces," Dano's performance as a lost dreamer running from adulthood resonates beautifully.

After much fumbling, the snicks and giggles of adolescence grow wearying yet again.

It's the same-old flesh-chewing. Like vampires, this genre is getting deadly.

What the movie captures overall looks like a scene from a sci-fi, postapocalyptic nightmare.

Film enthusiasts especially will appreciate this wonky but fascinating documentary about the process of making movies.

Despite the presence of Jet Li, only the last half-hour of this chatty epic truly flies.

Bloom's watchfulness and brittle seriousness anchors The Good Doctor, even as it wanders away from reality and into its own bizarre world.

This is the kind of junky, hard-to-watch thriller that apologists claim is part of a long line of tough, grindhouse-style thrillers, but which is actually just amateurish gristle.

As this strong, moving documentary shows, for those who came to the U.S., reconnecting to their culture and blood relatives can result in a generation of young people who feel "somewhere between" Chinese and American. They're never fully one or the other, but in the best cases can feel part of both.

This gorgeous-looking documentary is crying out to be remade as a family film feature.

The actors click into high gear, and Premium Rush delivers.

The boat rides and picnics we're privy to are an enjoyable way to get to a bittersweet conclusion. Yet it's hard not to feel like we've taken this trip before.

By the middle of the second hour, you'll be wishing a zombie would just chomp off your head to end the pain.

Sadly, Hit & Run, for as much sporadic fun and genuine heart it has, runs out of gas. But it's not for lack of trying, and that counts for something.

This comic drama tries too hard to serve up a slice of manic life, but Eisenberg, along with Tracy Morgan and Isiah Whitlock Jr. as the affable druggies, provides some spark.

Director Craig Zobel's indie, based on real cases, has a sharp psychological point and a can't-look-away quality even as it turns horrifically dark.

No one conveys late-life elegy and cool intellectual cunning like Langella.

This stately chiller owes a lot to 1960s British flicks like "The Innocents" and "The Haunting," but unfortunately heads towards cliches with every step.

"2" works harder to land punches, but when it does, it provides the kind of fun it's fan base hopes for. But expectations, and targets, are lower all around.

The 12-year-old boys who go to see ParaNorman - and who are the only ones who might enjoy it - should double up on the sugary treats to stay awake during this gorgeous-looking but zombi-fied stop-motion animated creep show. It's as slow as a corpse, and half as interesting.

This earnest, at times touching, reach-for-your-dreams doc about musical hopefuls in middle age gets sidetracked quickly. When it should focus on a reunited R&B group, it wallows in the self-aggrandizement of an L.A. producer and, most awkwardly, a New York cabaret singer.

Filled with enough clichés to be broken up and sold in pieces as junk material.

Goats is just b-a-a-a-aad.

Like the politicians it skewers, it knows the real winner is the stupidity, stupid.

If you're not in that demographic, don't dismiss it. You'll miss out on a genuinely sweet, perfectly acted, remarkably brave little movie that should make audiences swoon for something they thought was gone - a smart dramedy for grown-ups.

Unlike last year's superior "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer" - which put its grade-school heroine through similarly seasonal woes - "Dog Days" squanders several chances to find something magical in the mundane.

There's something sadly poetic about a movie dealing with disappearing memories that vanishes from your mind while you watch it.

The reason director Fernando Meirelles' intimate drama 360 succeeds where other adaptations of Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 sexual circle-back play "La Ronde" haven't is, ironically, because it puts less emphasis on body heat and more on intellectual coolness.

Every summer needs a super-turkey. So barring anything in the next 30 days that's the second coming of "Howard the Duck," the witless, completely terrible "comedy" now called The Watch should win hands-down.

The finished "Ring" cycle, a combination of "myth, science and legend" made to order as Wagner imagined it, was unique to every viewer's eye. The making of it will be spellbinding to everyone.

Everything that goes around comes around, but the roundelay in 30 Beats comes off, well, a little square.

While director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale's epic of criminality and all-consuming conviction ultimately falls a bit short - missing, for instance, a villainous face a la Heath Ledger's Joker - their Batman trilogy ends with a suitably thrilling mix of guts and glory.

A ghost-busting drama set in a world of mystics, mind-benders and various and sundry fake-psychic gobbledygook. But the weirdest thing is how all the fun gets lost in a bottom-drawer "X Files" story.

Becomes too melodramatic and bleakly obvious. Weaving, though, as always, is never less than magnetic.

This slovenly, self-indulgent riff on Charles Bukowski-like fringe-livers has all of the naked harshness of Bukowski with none of the poetry. At least Haas gives it a good shot.

Stone relies on his leads to guide us into this hyper-charged inferno, and they fit his juiced-up approach like James Woods and Woody Harrelson did in Stone's equally hopped-up "Salvador" and "Natural Born Killers." He gets us high on what they're selling before it goes south.

Director Marc Webb's action-adventure is grounded in a recognizable reality, but is also full of thrills. It's dark and mysterious, but doesn't skimp on fun.

Winds up feeling like a form of emotional tourism. The images recall Terrence Malick, but the film fills "atmosphere" into dry narrative holes where a story should reside.

Its hard sell wears you down and draws you in, even as you know you're being manipulated.

Gorgeously animated and featuring a tapestry of real-looking wonders, Brave is certainly a thing of beauty. But its emotional layers don't yield the same depth.

Much of the young cast - especially a miscast Page - make the oft-repeated mistake of saying Allen's dialogue as he might say them; the result is a lot of hyperarticulation, stammering and gesturing.

One of the year's most emotionally affecting movies.

This insipid mashup of history lesson and monster flick takes itself semi-seriously, which is truly deadly.

As awful as most of That's My Boy is, it's sort of mesmerizing to see how Sandler - in a script credited to David Caspe - keeps his touchstones in place.

Scenes of the director as a school-age boy in a Varda film are haunting, but end up simply sparking a desire to see Varda's work.

Quirky, but infinitely more interesting than big-budget Hollywood cousins.

This trip through the seminal performance artist's (often literal) body of work is sometimes too cozy, yet Abramovic might argue that objectivity is impossible if truth is the destination.

The faces and voices are endlessly compelling as they talk about what inspires them to lay down beats and recall the early days in New York. Ice-T, disentangled from acting, makes himself a fine focal point.

We are left, after all the propulsive action, with great turns by Theron and Rapace, and a tightly wound turn by Fassbender, whose eerie, poetically impish mechanical man might have burst from Bradbury's conscience.

Peace, Love and Misunderstanding has a place for everybody in its heart-of-gold band.

Madagascar 3 can't upgrade its own shtick, becoming a craven example of a fast-buck, no-fun family film.

Abe's day-to-day trials may eventually seem like cheap daytime TV, but Gelber and Solondz know how to nail the uncomfortably funny optimism shadowing American desperation.

As the team gets in shape, a hot new ringer is brought in and the fallen son redeems himself - and director Steve Rash's movie wins us over.

Is it all valid? Perhaps. Should the film's questions be addressed? Absolutely.

The charmless but harmless A Cat in Paris hits theaters yet doesn't enchant.

The film doesn't play games; it's basically just Lucas going through a short story-like period of reflection and redemption almost entirely without dialogue. It's not enough, but it is what this underappreciated actor does best.

The actor (Garcia), whose banked anger has been a secret weapon since "The Untouchables" 25 years ago, paints a fascinating portrait of a man moved by fate.

Boasting perhaps the most bored-sounding voice-over ever, this unexceptional drama imagines itself - much as its young heroine does - to be far more noteworthy than it actually is.

Clayman, who co-directed with filmmaker friends, is fascinating company.

What you don't expect is how bad almost all of it is.

Add two more stars here if zoning out to weirdo-dreamy, '80s public-access TV with a synthesizer soundtrack is your idea of midnight fun. Because this ambitious, but not uninteresting, failure has that in its DNA.

Yoichi Sai's movie may be a bit tough for young viewers, but it is gentle and illuminating.

The movie as a whole falls victim to a dewy kind of Tennessee Williams-itis, as Black plops too many wanna-be, colorful twists - imminent illness, botched robberies, fake pregnancies - into what is at heart a gently heartbreaking rendering.

The worst humans-fighting-aliens movie I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of humans-fighting-aliens movies.

A well-done, conscientious and funny little film that recalls "Clueless," only with more heart.

Director Joe Berlinger mixes archival footage, concert scenes, interviews and present-day reunions to meld a harmonious, fair-minded, energetic and enlightening portrait of one masterpiece's moment in time.

Whether it works is a matter of taste, but the fact that Burton's revisit unearths enough fun while feeling like four films in one is testament to the source's seductive bloodline.

It winds up just being annoying.

Their devotion to their art is admirable, and the film gets under the skin, if never really in our blood.

Oasis also takes aim at the bottled-water industry, entertainingly calling in psychologists to break down our fears of what is - or isn't - contaminating what we drink.

Most impressive of all, The Avengers makes superhero movies new again - a colossal task indeed.

Jack Black adds new depths to his slippery comic persona in Bernie, a movie that may not ultimately add up to much, but which is filled with wonderfully odd details of weird Americana.

Grace, especially, gives a turn that could be a twerpy cousin to Tom Cruise's character in "Magnolia"; Fischer's dead-eyed responses to this Mensa-member/player who think he's book jacket-hot are priceless.

Despite some tough-to-take moments, this challenging, smart movie is worth the trip.

Safe arrives filled with bombast and sneers but barely any thrills.

This wannabe Sherlockian thriller is like a night spent at Madame Tussauds, watching mannequins strangle other mannequins.

Director Mary Harron ("American Psycho") can do little with this bloodless drama.

Chimpanzee lets everyone feel like a mini-Jane Goodall.

The folksy shenanigans are well-intentioned but frankly interminable, with Kline's wry efficiency the best relief from all the yowling and whining.

Falarde, in adapting a play, has a sweet, humanistic approach reminiscent of Bill Forsyth's '80s dramedies that lets "Lazhar's" protagonist and his class shine.

Affectionate but also winking (the "Star Wars"-riff title gives away its lack of objectivity), with a good history of how far fandom has come, "A Fan's Hope" is really for those who've turned to the far side, but is ready to turn on a tractor beam for everyone else.

Directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger stage a few good action set pieces, but unlike the 1981 midnight movie classic it imitates, the blandly titled Lockout never busts out of its cheesy concept.

Not all of the twists work, but most are self-knowing enough to keep you guessing until its (literally) groundbreaking conclusion.

There's just some great imitations of what remains an acquired taste.

What keeps the movie afloat, though, is Seann William Scott as Steve Stifler.

The idea of Willem Dafoe, one of our most watchable actors, playing a man stalking a thought-to-be-extinct animal in the wild is gripping in theory. In execution, however, The Hunter loses its way.

Just as precise and self-consciously precious as predicted. Which doesn't mean it hasn't got moments of charming wit buried under all its archness.

Hollowface, like Intruders (which ought to be just the singular "Intruder," as Hollowface works solo), is all about empty scares. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo does include perhaps the most half-hearted exorcism ever filmed, which only seems fitting.

The biggest fault is that comparatively little attention is given to the monsters.

"Dopey" is too good a word for it.

Feels stagy and anti-visceral.

The special effects here are wiry martial artists grunting their way through fight after fight. It's exhausting but exhilarating.

All In lays down some interesting hands but sometimes can't raise the stakes, though "Rounders" star Matt Damon lends a bit of celeb flash.

While we're meant to feel claustrophobic, we're not supposed to fight boredom, which kicks in quickly.

As tough-spirited as fans would hope for - and exciting and thought-provoking in a way few adventure dramas ever are.

The whole movie is about piecing together broken parts. It may not always come together, but what it makes, if you look at it the right way, is endearing.

Through it all, Tatum and Hill are totally winning.

It's nice to see righteous anger in a movie. If only the education drama Detachment knew what to do with it.

It's an unfunny Spanish movie that worked best as a two-minute trailer.

An extraordinary morsel of a movie, and yes, you'll want sushi afterward. But it won't taste like Jiro's.

The cast gives it all a good go, and pip-pip and all that for noticeable intelligence and a bit of the old British satire. Yet Salmon Fishing takes patience and rewards with no bite.

The tricky camera moves that fill up Silent House make for one-half of a nerveracking horror film – before the movie's obviousness just gets on your nerves.

What director Andrew Stanton has brought forth from Burroughs' limited, hoary source material is actually kind of fun.

If only this Eddie Murphy flick had taken its own advice and spent a little more time being reflective instead of hyperactive, it might have overcome a trite script and awful, obvious excuses for comedy.

Appearances from Jeff Goldblum, Zach Galifianakis and John C. Reilly help some, but all the mincing from Heidecker and Wareheim, the wanna-be, gross-out humor and THE CONSTANT SCREAMING get tiring.

Weitz – who did a great job adapting Nick Hornby's "About a Boy" into an affecting 2002 movie – can't bring the pieces together here.

Act of Valor is like watching the wrestlers in dramas produced by the WWE: They're great at what they do, but being in front of the camera isn't part of that.

So with a wink, a nudge and a heaping portion of Midwestern charm, Thin Ice reels us in. Comparisons to "Fargo" and other convoluted little capers like "House of Games" are fair, but when taken on its own terms, this quirky drama thrums along in a low-blood-pressure way.

Sadly suffers from more than a dollop of boredom. Like the ornate dollhouse that plays a part, "Arrietty" is lovely and well-appointed, but filled with only what you bring to it.

If "Ice" never really solidifies, it's nonetheless the work of a filmmaker whose seriousness is worth watching out for.

Director Danis Tanovic never undersells the anger and tension in the family, yet while the emotional underpinnings feel raw, much of "Cirkus" also winds up spinning 'round to obvious, if uncomfortable, places.

As shown in this disarming and intimate documentary named after their band, the oddness of actually being sought-after was something neither was prepared for.

Still, in movie terms, Warrior's Heart makes curling look like gladiatorial combat.

Important and gripping.

Chronicle is an energetic hodgepodge that tweaks familiar conventions just enough to seem fresh. Forget the X-Men - these are iHeroes.

If there's a book-loving adventuress or adventurer in your house younger than 10, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island provides a lighthearted break from the death-obsessed "Harry Potter" franchise and other literary but limp adventures like the "Narnia" films and "The Lightning Thief."

This quiet drama is not for everyone. It may not even be for fans of Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr, whose spare, naturalistic films can be, well, trying. (The director has said that "Horse" will be his final film.)

Unfortunately, "modern" additions (like the soldiers' YouTube videos and some social media moments) feel clunky, and a necessarily shortened approach trips the movie up, though leads Matt Doyle and Seth Numrich - accomplished Broadway actors - are intense, engaged and appropriately tragic.

Johnson's feel for the rhythms of reconnection are steady, and she and her fine actors make Return one of only a handful of films to honestly address what to many is heartbreaking reality.

Safe House devolves into unexciting action scenes that feel left over from the "Bourne" flicks and are peopled with cloak-and-dagger stereotypes.

It would be easy to say that the final minutes of this mixed-up thriller make everything before it meaningless, but that would indicate the odd conclusion has meaning, too.

A cool documentary that pivots adroitly between viewpoints and ambitions.

Though it eventually gets down to more serious business, this Glasgow-set apocalyptic romance-drama seems, at first, to be most concerned about whether restaurants will survive the end of the world.

The genuinely sweet nature of this sometimes clunky movie is mixed with a little sass, and wins you over.

This isn't a therapy session on film; it's a visually stark, lively, organically engrossing movie with a very real handle on the mental processes, and interpersonal demands, that come with issues of life and death.

The gristle inside this movie is one of the things that save it from being simply a series of challenges.

Latest, dreadful entry in the vampires-battling-werewolves franchise.

This quirky indie has an off-kilter, shaggy appeal and a filling story.

While its tone and humanity offset the futility of each side's need for one crucial hill, much of this intense, honorable film is too drawn-out.

George Lucas produced this candy-coated, fictionalized drama, and while its cast is first-rate and its flying sequences sharp, the movie is as glazed and wide-eyed as a 70-year-old comic book.

Haywire, clean and no-fuss as it is, needs more action scenes to match Carano's game.

Belafonte still finds ways to address injustice - and now we have over 50 years of his example to follow and his music to enjoy.

Only Wahlberg rises above the muck; everything else here feels buried in concrete.

The acting and general schlockiness make "Friday the 13th" look like "Macbeth," but it's clear D'Onofrio just wants to hang out. And actually, a lot of the music is really good. Let's hope next time, he decides to make something like "The Commitments" instead.

Ridiculous and mannered, Loosies is light-fingered but heavy-handed.

His story, like the current release "A Separation," shows a glimpse inside Iran of everyday reversals of fortune, and how easy it is to get caught in the crosshairs of bureaucracy, bad judgment and bad luck.

Acclaimed director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's meditative, at times maddening expression of human mystery and barren landscapes is gorgeous to look at, intriguing to think about and, at times, hard to sit through.

A dumb thriller starring Dennis Quaid as a weirdo mortician taunted by high school kids into revealing what he did with his wife and her lover years before - and look at the movies it rips off...

It's the same movie town we've seen many times before, with dingy mechanic's shops, barren parking lots and a greasy-spoon diner where all the clichés come together.

Oduye, especially, is utterly absorbing. Even in those few moments when the movie follows a slightly more straightforward line than it needs, she is always engagingly, beautifully real.

Together and apart, Hatami and Maadi are magnetic. Hatami, a star in Iranian cinema, lets us see Simin's intelligence and defiant sense of self-worth often with nothing more than a gesture.

The result is that, as with Hanks' performance, what's missing - subtlety, truth, an earned sense of rebirth – is stronger than what's here. Despite all the connections in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it never connects to us the way we need it to.

It is how the film never loses sight of the closeness of the combatants, turning national intimacy into a tragic casualty.

"Field of Dreams" this ain't, and Crowe, whose "Jerry Maguire" and "Almost Famous" are justly held in high esteem, can't build the right frame here. It's neither fish nor fowl; a "guy-gets-his-life-right" rom-com runs smack into a "kids-with-animals" lark.

Close and McTeer, an evenly matched odd-couple pairing, keep it real. They do the heavy lifting, and are utterly enchanting, whether in bonnets or boots.

He (Fincher) gives in to its mimicry of an Agatha Christie parlor game. Only instead of Miss Marple, the old-gal crime-solver with piercing blue eyes, we get Lisbeth Salander, pierced goth-girl investigator with raccoon eyes.

The result ends up like an "SNL" skit: knowingly over-the-top but still fun.

Either the "Alvin and the Chipmunks" movies are getting better, or I've accidentally buried my brain for the winter. The third entry in the franchise - Chip-Wrecked - is, dare I say, the charm.

It's a shame neither actress can truly "go for the jugular," as Alan says at one point. This is a work that would allow for it.

The Sitter is not only an atrocious shout-out to bad '80s comedies, it's also the kind of movie Jonah Hill should look at as a crass blast from his past.

Young Adult may at times be stuck between emotional gears, but that's by design. Like its heroine, the movie refuses to pick up after itself.

While the film becomes slightly redundant, the anger and strife its characters cannot overcome is awful, poetic and, frankly, astonishing.

This is a mother's tale, and in Swinton's expert hands, Eva must ultimately deal with the fallout from an uncomfortable truth: She just never liked her kid.

Though Julia Leigh's surprisingly dull debut is meant to present the mysteries of a troubled young woman, you're more likely to wonder why its star, Emily Browning, is drawn to such demeaning roles.

Apparently, it takes a village - or the collection of villages known as Los Angeles - to go nowhere slowly.

There is also inspiration in watching her find herself by helping others.

Here, in his best performance since "Spider," Fiennes plays the snarling, entitled general Caius Martius Coriolanus, whose bloody brow and bald head are stained with what's left of his soldiers.

Harrelson though, is in every scene, and seeing him burn up Rampart is positively arresting.

All of the actors' vocal performances are spot-on, including McAvoy's gentle Arthur, Nighy's salty GrandSanta and Ashley Jensen's cute stowaway elf Bryony, a chipper little pixie that would make Rudolph's pal Hermey proud.

When Marilyn Monroe appears, things stop. She is, as portrayed by Michelle Williams, a strange and beautiful alien: Unpredictable, odd, magnetic.

Westby's nervy story is like "Desperately Seeking Susan" played straight. Let's hope O'Grady's next film meets this one's potential.

Its young heroine is proud to be herself; there's just not much for her to do beyond that.

Peter Mullan and Olivia Colman give such hard-as-nails, lived-in performances in this stark drama directed by Irish actor Paddy Considine ("In America," "Cinderella Man") that it's impossible not to be pulled in.

It doesn't try too hard, but what The Lie is working at, in its unassuming, amusing way, is a mini-portrait of growing pains in a time of extended adolescence. The truth is, that kind of thing is never easy, no matter what age.

Payne's observational humor and attention to detail yield something emotionally epic. Everything from beachfront jogs to hospital confessions reveals layers of humanity and absurdity.

Had the film stood still more often, its stylish gambit would have worked better.

Lars von Trier's end-of-days drama Melancholia feels as if it's something from another world...but even by his standards this remote yet lovely funereal dirge is in its own orbit.

Though this family film is slick and well-intentioned, it comes off as shallow as a prom committee meeting.

At least Leonardo DiCaprio, grounded and sure, has commitment to spare. His portrayal of Hoover is undeniably terrific.

This well-made, elegant doc follows the British actress as she travels and discusses life, art, fashion, sex and death with various friends and collaborators, including novelist Paul Auster and photographer Peter Lindbergh.

Unfortunately, director Joe Maggio's film, despite showing real promise and an ear for threats delivered with a smile, runs out of gas.

Director Nick Hamm's movie is sparky and fun, and full of affectionate pokes at the '80s music scene. It's also, in terms of music biopics, probably better than the real thing.

Writer-director David M. Rosenthal fills this dewy road-trip movie with too many cliches. From the glimpses we get of Shue's character, that may have been a more rockin' story.

Finding a fresh setting for a comedy is difficult, but a Renaissance fair is too broad a target.

This wildly entertaining Bollywood action-comedy, with Indian superstar Shahrukh Khan in two roles, pays homage to such '90s flicks as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "The Matrix," adding whimsy and loads of heart.

Sadly, for 99% of its running time, this muddled sci-fi drama is filled with enough overplotting, bad acting and riddle-speak dialogue to stop a clock.

Luckily, the cast is comfortable going with the flow. Ribisi is amusingly corrosive, while Jenkins and Rispoli are sweaty, cigar-chomping movie-journalist archetypes.

Carla Gugino has yet to find the right movie that clicks with her spunky outsider appeal, but The Mighty Macs, a gauzy, inspiring true-life drama about a girls' basketball team, at least gets her close and provides a lot of assists.

The movie lumbers, and Loach and screenwriter Rona Munro's affectless approach winds up tamping down the movie's good intentions.

One of the many beautiful things about this affecting, informative doc is the opportunity it gives to see the American college sports world through different eyes.

A few really weird things happen during Paranormal Activity 3, though unfortunately, they have nothing to do with being frightened.

This brisk but full documentary about students at a Bronx high school taking a class that promotes literacy and poetry slams is, like its subjects, multifaceted, sometimes sad but ultimately inspiring.

Rote, dull and point-blank obvious.

Almodovar makes some missteps in his icky mélange of melodrama and mischief, but the end result is playfully devious.

This one could have flown over the cuckoo's nest, or smacked into a glass pane, but instead lands in the middle of the road where quirky and popular meet.

In terms of scares, this old-fashioned Thing is better than most new things.

This drama, as traditional as its subject was epochal, is earnest and studious to a fault. Rarely has a film about upheaval felt more like a textbook.

There's as much social history of L.A.'s racial divide as there is appreciation for the band's big, genre-crossing sound. It all comes together for a rollicking chronicle of verve and nerve.

Director Mateo Gill's autumnal movie has elements of other late-era Westerns in its blood, but it isn't easily pigeonholed. There are shootouts and standoffs, as well as great scenes like one between the grizzled, perfectly cast Shepard and Rea discussing the cost of criminality and the changing morals of old men.

In either a stunningly brave or misguided act of meta-absurdity, Real Steel, which is about a boy, his dad and the robot that changes their lives, actually feels as if it were made inside the mind of a kid obsessed with robots.

It should surprise no one that visually quirky, graphic-novelish, pulp-noir action flicks rarely come through the sausage machine intact.

Broomfield's point that Palin followers threaten her enemies, though, is worthy of a different documentary - perhaps one about American fanaticism.

This heartbreaking and essential look into the lives of those who put so much into educating other people's children ought to be seen by anyone concerned about the fate of the public school system, and the nation as a whole.

This comedy is empty.

Dream House is the full magilla, with imaginary images, sanity questions, peek-a-boo startles and the usual are-they-real-or-not? characters.

50/50 pulls no punches in its depiction of living day-to-day with illness. There's pain and fear, no question. But this dramatic comedy is also warm, honest and, most especially, funny.

A ridiculously cheesy confection filled with unthrilling thrills, bored-looking adults and a comically overstuffed backstory.

The result is far too high-and-mighty to truly be moving.

Parents should know that the ending makes the last moments of this family-friendly documentary as tough as "Bambi." But the lessons about friendship are gigantic, indeed.

Transporting as it is, this doc leaves a bad taste in your mouth, if just for the ill will it drudges up.

Warm memories of one school under a groove and a moving ending that no screenwriter could improve upon.

Kurt Cobain, TicketMaster and the tragic concert in Roskilde, Denmark, are addressed through plentiful backstage footage. If only it was about something other than rockers almost irked they got famous.

This extraordinary hybrid of a movie lives and breathes the game, yet its achievement is bigger than that. There's a touch of old-fashioned romanticism here, but more crucially there's strategy going on inside Bennett Miller's movie that turns it into something cool and special.

Rois has moments of desperate urgency and depth, but Twyker's love of parallels is finally done in by artsy shots of the threesome au naturel against stark white backdrops.

This overly twee, morbidly cute romance initially digs up the ageless "Harold and Maude" as a touchstone before it slips the coils of watchability.

Though Lorenz Knauer's film is as thoughtful as his subject - with a break for interviews with Pierce Brosnan and Goodall's fellow UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie - the study of chimps is given short shrift.

For all the movement in Drive, the quiet, deathly still moments are the ones that count.

This god-awful, unfunny, stinkingly putrid sketch-comic movie has exactly one snicker-worthy moment, involving Kevin Nealon and a stolen grape. But watching the rest of it will make you whine.

Lengthy clips of leaders including Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael bring us back to emotional moments in this country's history.

To see these children of waitresses, salon workers and fathers on disability burdened because they stepped up is humanizing and heartbreaking.

These World Wrestling Entertainment-produced movies are a world unto themselves: Cliché-ridden B-flicks anchored by monstrously huge grapplers giving acting their all.

Has moments of power that push through a fake-out script.

There's a sense of dread in Contagion, but it never spreads to us. When Day 1 is finally shown, it makes you want to eat better, which isn't the same as saying this is a great movie.

Has no thrills, no chills, no scares and contains a villain, or several of them, actually, that will turn you to stone -- from boredom.

There's a climactic putt, of course, but by then you wish Duvall would get one more "Tender Mercies" under his belt so you can forget about this tin cup of a family flick.

This incredibly moving, touchingly honest and transcendent chronicle of how a handful of people coped after Sept. 11 is not only one of the best distillations of that day, but a monument to humanity lost and gained.

The jokes are hit-and-miss, but the cast is uniformly game, with Labine stealing the show.

Though he has a true appreciation for detail, Joffe has the scar-faced Pinkie so scurvy that Rose ought to run the minute she sees him.

As clichés trot through their sessions - it's like "In Treatment" as bedroom farce - we check out. Huppert, though, is as fearless as ever.

Keshavarz's vision is clear and heartfelt, and everyone has an urgency in their eyes.

Despite a pleasantly laid-back demeanor, you wish it would just get focused.

This thought-provoking but overlong doc wins points for being all-inclusive.

Harlin even makes poor Kilmer go running about. Just like that image, "5 Days" is embarrassingly clumsy.

Cooper, Torre and Dane DeHaan, as a soldier smitten with a local girl, stand out among a strong cast. With its big ideas on an intimate scale, this is Sayles' best in a decade.

Before going off in conventional directions, "Circus" is terrifically weird, funny and garish. Bozo and Clarabelle it ain't.

With the most growling and grunting of any movie this summer - and that includes those apes perched atop the box office - Conan the Barbarian seems at times to have actually been made by barbarians.

Now CDL aficionados have One Day, though it is a tedious addition to this subspecies of rom-com, despite Anne Hathaway's efforts to make us fall for her regardless of the setting.

His years of success aren't as gripping as Kapadia, and Senna's legend, would have us believe. He had no demons besides fame, and no hurdles besides a recklessness that went with the territory.

A lot of gleeful audience members are interviewed in Glee: The 3-D Concert Experience, though the source of their happiness could be a lot of things.

Without pushing too heavily, Green makes the parallels between Enrique and Michael's situations genuine.

The result is a dull, high-minded soap opera.

Director Larysa Kondracki's fictionalized account of a true story is underserved by a melodramatic script; the result is like a film of a "60 Minutes" segment. Still, Weisz is strong and smart. And David Strathairn shows up in is-he-good-or-evil? mode.

Like its antiheroes, this slacker tragedy has moments of calm and originality that are sadly obliterated by a tendency toward the extreme. Still, in a kind of reverse apocalypse, the movie's toughest stretch is its first two-thirds, a navel-gazing, semi-romantic nothing-a-thon that falls away in time for the movie to emerge from the ashes.